“We’ll proceed with the contract.”
The words had barely left his mouth when Viola’s face lit up.
The face that had been quietly stiff with nerves a moment ago was gone; with her eyes gone round, her expression was just like yesterday’s.
That particular squirrel-like face of hers.
“Thank you for giving me this chance!”
She smiled, flushing pink, and beamed with delight.
A chance, she says.
Should he call it naive?
The ducal house had needed this woman from the start. The mere fact that she could make an ointment that worked on a Dragonblood meant that, whoever she really was, she would be of use to him one way or another.
Even if she were a spy sent from elsewhere, he would have found some way to keep her tied to this place. If anything, he welcomed an offer like this.
He took a sheet of paper from inside his coat and quickly began drawing up the contract. It was no ordinary paper, but a contract scroll imbued with mana.
“Let me confirm once more. Your terms?”
“Protect the Saintess candidate and me, the candidate’s guardian. In return, I will cure Young Lord Jayden of his Tamutar disease.”
“Agreed. But I have one more condition.”
“What sort of…”
“This was meant to be a job interview in the first place, wasn’t it? You passed. So rather than simply curing the Tamutar disease, you’ll work as Jayden’s personal pharmacist for the whole term of the contract.”
The woman’s eyes went round. Wide as they were, they were exactly the color of new sprouts.
“Oh, is that all right? I thought you still suspected me… What if I really am a spy and I use some strange medicine?”
So she was aware that she looked suspicious. Her objectivity about herself was remarkable. Before he knew it, one corner of Cain’s mouth quirked up.
“My principle is to keep what I suspect close, where I can watch it.”
“If that’s how it is… all right! I’ll accept the condition.”
At last, every clause of the contract was in order.
Cain set down his pen and pulled off the gloves he’d been wearing.
“Your hand.”
The woman seemed to understand what he meant, and she nodded and held out her slender white hand.
Without hesitation, Cain took it, slid his fingers between hers, and laced them together.
Her long, pale fingers were caught up in his, utterly defenseless. Bare skin pressed fully against bare skin.
Ahem. Hem!
Viola cleared her throat as if embarrassed for no reason. And this from the woman who’d grabbed a strange man’s hand without a second thought to treat it.
And yet at a moment like this, she turned shy. It wasn’t that she knew no shame at all—perhaps she simply had standards of her own.
As though she couldn’t bear the situation, she finally turned her head slightly to avoid his gaze. For some reason that didn’t sit well with him, so Cain gently took her chin and made her look at him.
“You should look properly. Isn’t this the moment you wanted?”
“Uwaah. Y-yes…”
Only now did her light-green eyes meet his properly.
With their hands still clasped, the two of them took hold of the contract at the same time, and a strange light began to swirl over the scroll.
It meant the contract had been properly sealed. Unlike an ordinary contract, one made with a scroll carried binding force.
Should either party break the terms, the mana infused in the scroll would exact a penalty.
“So does that finish the contract process…?”
“As you can see.”
She carefully drew her hand away.
“Should I bring the Saintess candidate right away? I left the candidate at a friend’s house.”
“I’ll send a knight and a carriage with you, just in case.”
“Thank you! Then I’ll set off right away!”
Viola bowed her head in thanks and hurried to gather her things to leave. Then she stopped short, as if she’d belatedly remembered something.
“Um… I was going back and forth about whether to say this, but…”
She spun around and once again bowed at a perfect right angle, just as she had when she’d first greeted him.
“Th-thank you so much for yesterday…!”
“What?”
The question shot out of him at words he couldn’t make sense of.
“The person I ran into yesterday—that was you, Your Grace, wasn’t it? I actually thought it was strange. That a pharmacist position would open up at just the right moment, exactly when I needed one.”
The woman slowly straightened up and gave a shy smile. At the same time, his eyes caught on her pale hand as it tucked a lock of hair that had slipped loose back behind her ear.
“Thanks to the chance you gave me, I was able to get what I wanted. Thank you again.”
Cain was bewildered by all of this.
How on earth did she notice?
That the man had been him.
Not that he’d been trying to hide it on purpose. There had simply been no need to reveal it.
The reason Cain used a robe and various magic tools when he went out was never to hide his identity in the first place; it was for other people’s sake.
Simply not realizing who he was would make them less afraid.
So he had assumed she had no way of discovering who he was.
He had used not only a disguise but a magic tool that kept people from remembering his face.
Unless she were an exceptional mage, there was no way she could escape a magic tool’s influence. Yet he hadn’t sensed anything like mana from her.
“How did you know? That it was me.”
But the woman’s answer was absurd.
“Your hands.”
“What?”
“Um, I thought they were lovely.”
Viola laughed awkwardly and scratched her cheek.
“All I know how to do is trim herbs… so I’d never seen hands like a fine knight’s before, and I found them fascinating.”
Though I never dreamed they belonged to the Duke and not a knight, she added in a dazed voice.
“Anyway, I look forward to working with you!”
With those last words, Viola fluttered out of the drawing room.
Unlike her, gone as suddenly as she’d come, Cain remained rooted where he stood.
Only after a long while did he look down at his own hand.
It was nothing but a hand covered in scars from old wounds and thick with calluses.
I walked out of the drawing room pretending to be perfectly calm, but I soon slid right down onto the floor.
Hwaah. I thought I was going to die of nerves.
Still, the plan worked. With this, I shouldn’t have much to worry about from now on.
It had been worth hurrying to get this done before that happened.
According to the original, a few months from now, the Temple would manage to create a new holy relic by artificial means.
A tool that could detect anyone with strong holy power.
Priests did possess holy power, but they had no ability to sense anyone else’s.
So in order to find the Saintess, they had made a holy relic themselves, by artificial means.
In the original, that holy relic was basically the reason I died.
Because it was that relic that exposed Melody’s existence, after she’d been living peacefully with me out in the quiet countryside.
Remembering the original sent a shiver crawling down my spine. If I’d done nothing, it was obvious I would have died that way too.
But there was nothing to worry about now. So much had changed from the original.
More importantly…
That knight was Cain himself.
I never could have imagined who he really was. I hadn’t realized the whole time we were talking.
He must have used some kind of magic tool after all.
There were all sorts of magic tools in the world. They were outrageously expensive, so it wasn’t a field I knew much about, but…
He completely fooled me.
To be honest, I had kept feeling that something was off.
A job notice that went up at a suspiciously convenient time.
An interview far too easy, as if I’d been the chosen candidate all along. And the interviewer had been the Duke himself.
Plain good luck just doesn’t explain it.
On top of that, he kept seeming familiar. As if I’d met him somewhere before.
But I hadn’t been sure…
The moment I saw Cain’s hand, I finally realized.
Thick veins standing out across the back of it. Long, clean-lined fingers. A beautifully shaped hand, and yet the skin was covered in scars and calluses.
I heard Dragonbloods heal so well that they hardly ever scar.
And yet, if he had that many scars left all the same…
It must mean he’d driven himself even harder than that.
He’d pushed his body too far, never giving his wounds time to heal. As though he were handling a tool and not a living thing.
Well. He’s the man who shrugged it off when monster blood got into a wound.
I thought I understood, if only a little, the kind of path he had walked.
I was standing blankly in the corridor when—
“Would you be Miss Viola?”
“Oh, yes!”
Miss Viola. It was the first time I’d heard that since I started raising Melody, so it felt a little awkward. But before I could correct them, the knights came over.
We went straight to Catherine’s house and brought Melody back.
And so, back to the ducal residence once more.
“Uu…”
As if the new place frightened her a little, Melody shrank back.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. This is where we’ll be living from now on.”
“Uu-uu?”
“Come on, say hello to the Duke.”
Thump-thump. My heart was racing.
The story had changed a great deal, but this was a lot like the beginning of the original. The heroine and the parenting story’s father were finally meeting.
Unlike the bleak original, I liked how peaceful the mood was.
Melody’s eyes darted this way and that before she gave a little bow, but that was all. Then the child whimpered and ran straight to me.
“Mommy!”
“I told you it’s all right. Oh, you. What a little scaredy-cat.”
“Uu-uu. Mommy.”
When I teased her lightly, the child seemed to relax, and her stiff lips pushed out into a pout.
But just then—
Cain, who had been walking toward us, stopped dead.
“…Mommy?”
“Pardon? What did you just…”
“The Saintess candidate… is your daughter?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Your daughter? Not your sister?”
His face was as expressionless as ever, but for some reason, Cain’s eyes looked confused.
